


In Your Clouded Mind

by finnandfluke



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Justice League - All Media Types, Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Clark keeps un-dying, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, more comfort than hurt tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-29 16:14:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20438849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finnandfluke/pseuds/finnandfluke
Summary: Clark dies.  Then he wakes up.





	In Your Clouded Mind

Coming alive feels like this:

Grit under fingernails, cobwebbed lungs, deep-tissue aches, the sweep of eyelashes against dry cheeks, and a hole where he used to have a stomach.

He’s never felt hunger before, but this is probably close to that in quality, if not severity.

Being alive wasn’t supposed to hurt quite so much.

There is a figure kneeling over him, gentle fingers and menacing voice. Clark can taste that voice on the back of his tongue. He can’t remember the man’s name (is it a man? There’s something strange about his face, the silhouette somehow not the human standard). He thinks the man is important, because everyone else is listening to him.

And there are others: a woman with a rope, a man with a three-pronged spear, a vibrating form of energy that might be a boy or could be an afterimage of whatever killed Clark this time.

He has died before. He must have, for revival to feel so familiar.

The world fades between blinks and he floats through the thick treacle of half-conciousness.

They’re somewhere else now, somewhere indoors with little blinking lights and bare-walled echoes. This doesn’t feel familiar, but it is not foreign. Hospital, probably. Clark hates hospitals. Hospitals exist for the people who will die someday. They aren’t for him.

Or maybe they are. Clark has died at least twice now. Probably more, probably he has died a lot throughout his life. How old is he?

Clark Kent, born April 18, 1983, in Smallville, Kansas. Kal-El, born 57th day of cycle 4952, City of Ilad, Krypton. Both of these things are true. Both are important. He does not remember why.

He thinks he was told to remember these things, to keep them close. He remembers other things too, but they aren’t as… factual. There is the smell of growing things, wheat and corn and an old vegetable garden, under the brightest sunshine. A woman’s voice sings him a lullaby as he watches the plastic-star constellations on his ceiling. 

She is important too.

He sits in a room with a group of rough men, and they are all talking. No, they are laughing while one man tells a story, and they do not mind that Clark does not drink with them (it would be a waste, so he sips water, and they make assumptions).

There is an open space in his memory that is just cold, and white, and he likes the simplicity of that place even as he listens to the collective thrumming of the planet. He can let the sounds be noise out in the tundra. Is that where he was? Yes, tundra sounds right. Clark Kent of Smallville, Kansas, likes the tundra. That is another fact.

He also likes the melody of the city, but he must listen to it, to make sure that no one needs help. That’s… frustrating, he thinks. Because then he can’t listen to the other city, the one across the massive harbour. Sometimes he does anyway, because it’s important to hear… something. Something important.

Something so impossibly important that he cannot find in his memory. But he was listening for it, so maybe if he listens hard enough now – oh. It’s here in the room, the heart he listens for, the steadiest pulse he’s ever known. 

Except sometimes it’s not steady. Clark can remember being proud of making it speed up, making the body that holds it writhe under his touch. He remembers holding this man and listening to him breathe. He remembers sweat and slick, and they laughed together as friends while they made love. Clark is happy in these memories. 

The heartbeat skips, stops, tumbles over itself, and it is a thunderclap to Clark. He startles into awareness and opens his eyes. 

The man isn’t hurt (not badly, there are always bruises) and Clark is… not happy, exactly, but he is less unhappy than moments before. He wishes he had a word for that. The man would have a word for that, Clark is sure, because the man is the smartest person in the world. Probably.

He is sitting next to Clark’s bed, his elbows resting on the mattress, one hand cradling his forehead and the other rubbing the back of his neck. He is beautiful. Clark can’t remember his face, but what he sees (what he knows, deeper than logic) is so lovely. All Clark wants is to bring him closer, but the man’s heartbeat skips again as his shoulders tremble. He is hurting, but not hurt. Clark doesn’t understand yet, but the world is slipping into clarity and he hopes that soon he’ll know how to help.

The man is also speaking, but not in sentences. He just keeps saying things like ‘I’m sorry’, ‘wake up’, and ‘please, Clark’.

‘m’awake’ Clark feels himself mumble, because answering him is second nature after so many years. The man startles and looks at Clark, and he is pale and tear-stained and as beautiful as Clark knew he was. In the space of a blink the man has moved to sit beside Clark on the bed, and now his face is even closer. And then the man rests his hand on Clark’s cheek, and the hand has a piece of metal wrapped around one finger and Clark knows… he knows that it is important. It is so, so important. But he also knows that he won’t be able to think if Bruce’s lips get any closer.

Bruce. The man he loves is Bruce. Clark is in love. All of this is so important and he needs to tell Bruce because he tells Bruce everything important about his life because Bruce is his husband.

Yes, that feels right. He is married to Bruce, who keeps saying something about Clark and comas and other things that aren’t important right now.

‘Love you, B’ Clark says. Bruce stops talking then, his shoulders relaxing, his hand slipping into Clark’s hair.

‘I love you too, Clark,’ he says, and Clark feels like he’s floating, feels like he could fly… can fly. Right, he can fly. Wow. ‘But,’ Bruce continues, ‘don’t you dare pull a stunt like that again.’

Clark doesn’t remember what happened yet, but Bruce is the smartest person he knows, so it’s probably good advice. He hums ‘m’kay’ as he feels his eyes start to close. He doesn’t want them to close. He wants to keep looking at Bruce. Bruce is beautiful. Bruce is laughing and beautiful.

‘I’m holding you to that,’ he says, but Clark doesn’t remember what they were talking about. Bruce’s thumb is brushing against his cheek, and part of Clark wants to cry with how soft he feels. ‘Go to sleep, love,’ Bruce whispers, ‘I’ll stay right here. Get some rest.’

Clark’s eyes are too heavy to open again, but before the haze pulls him under he feels his husband’s lips on his cheek.


End file.
